Are you worried people might share you paid products?

But here’s why we don’t try to stop it.

If someone is stealing your stuff or redistributing your stuff then theoretically, you could sue them.

You really can’t keep people from sharing, but what we have found is this:

It doesn’t really matter.

People don’t really share your stuff and distribute it all across to every single person in your niche or industry that would need your stuff.

Here’s why that doesn’t really happen as often as you think:

They PAID for it

Usually, the first person that gets your digital product paid for it. More people than not will pay for your digital product, and when people pay for something, they are not as likely to just distribute that for free to everybody and anyone that they can see it for.

They are not going to just give it out because they paid their hard earned money for it and they’ve got it.

Even if they do share it,

If you create your digital product correctly, it’s actually a good thing if you spread your message that way because you can put links back to your site, links to other related products.

It can actually be a way to market and drive traffic for future sales.

Then what can I do to discourage people from sharing my digital content?

1. Terms and Conditions

The first one is to create terms and conditions that people need to agree to before they download your product.

This is really important. If you’re not doing this, you need to start doing it immediately.

We have one that basically says that you are granted the non-exclusive use of the material —You may not sell or otherwise transfer the material.

2. Membership Wall

Another way is by having things behind a membership wall.

We never email files to people. We always make them download it themselves so they will come on to our website.

They will usually have a username and password that they have to use. People usually aren’t as open to giving people their username and password.

If you email a file to them, it’s really simple to push forward and send it on to someone else, but if you make them download it themselves, it’s a few more steps to sending it to someone else.

Again, it’s still fairly easy to do but hopefully, they won’t go through the extra effort to do so.

3. Break your product into parts

Let people consume your content over time in different pieces or parts.

If someone shares your content, they would not get hold of the entire package.

This might even drive traffic back to your site where they would buy the rest of the content.

It’s not as big a deal as you think.

90% of the people out there are going to come and buy your product. They are not going to share it.

If they do share it, it’s like with one person. It’s really not that big a deal.

We have made hundreds of thousands of dollars and the only thing we sell are digital products.

Don’t worry too much about it, and focus on building and growing your online business instead!

You can connect with S&J on social media too!

Thank you for listening!

Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below!

JOCELYN: Today, we are here with a question from Brittany Field and this is a question that I actually have myself sometimes. Brittany says,

“How do you deal with copyrights and all that legal stuff? If I put out a digital product, won’t people just copy or share my stuff? How do stop that from happening?”

If someone is stealing your stuff or redistributing your stuff then theoretically, you could sue them and go after them for that. You just have to prove that it was original and you would probably win. You’re always protected by the law in this instance but here’s the problem with digital products. If I email you a PDF, it is very easy for you to just email that PDF on to someone else. How do you keep that from happening and still run a profitable online business?

Well, you really can’t keep people from sharing but what we have found is this, it doesn’t really matter. People don’t really share your stuff and distribute it all across to every single person in your niche or industry that would need your stuff. We have people all the time, like, I have football coaches. Football coaches love to share information. I’ll send them playbooks and things like that and at first, I was like, “Man, what if he just gives his playbook to everybody else?”

But there are a couple of reasons why that doesn’t really happen. 1) Usually, the first person that gets your digital product paid for it. More people than not will pay for your digital product and when people pay for something, they are not as likely to just distribute that for free to everybody and anyone that they can see it for. They are not going to just give it out because they paid their hard earned money for it and they’ve got it.

Even if they do share it, if you create your digital product correctly, it’s actually a good thing if you spread your message that way because you can put links back to your site, links to other products in that digital product, and it can actually be a way to market and drive traffic to future sales.

JOCELYN: Not that we are condoning the practice of sharing people’s copyrighted information. We do not.

SHANE: Right, we don’t want people to share it. We don’t want that to happen but as a protection for yourself, just make it where people can link back to your site.

JOCELYN: There are a couple of things that you can do to kind of discourage people from sharing your digital content. The first one is to create terms and conditions that people need to agree to before they download your product. This is really important. If you’re not doing this, you need to start doing it immediately. I have one that basically says that you are granted the non-exclusive use of the material. You may not sell or otherwise transfer the material.

I even tell people you can make a hard copy for your own use. You can use it on up to two computers. There are templates for this out there online and we can actually put a link to our terms and conditions in today’s Q&A notes. If you want to check that out, it will be www.flippedlifestyle.com/QA04. You can check out some examples of the terms and conditions that we use. That’s the first way that you can protect yourself.

Another way is by having things behind a membership wall. I never email files to people. I always make them download it themselves. So they will come on to my website. They will usually have a username and password that they have to use. I find that people usually aren’t as open to giving people their username and password.

If you email a file to them, it’s really simple to push forward and send it on to someone else, but if you make them download it themselves, then, it’s a few more extra steps to sending it to someone else. Again, it’s still fairly easy to do but hopefully, they won’t go through the extra effort to do so. That’s just a couple of way that you can kind of discourage people from doing that.

There’s one other thing that you can do if you use PDFs. There are plugins out there or you can actually stamp the PDFs. I have done this in the past. I stamped the PDF with the person’s name but it turned out the plugin that I used, and I can’t even remember what it was.
SHANE: It’s pretty complicated to do that.

JOCELYN: Yeah, it was a little bit unstable. It didn’t play nicely with some of my other plugins, so I ended up doing away with it. It’s more trouble than it was worth, so just something to think about as you move forward with doing a plugin.

SHANE: Another thing you can do is break your product up into parts.

Let people consume your content over time in different pieces. I have a product that I have for coaches that teach them how to run a defense and then teach them how to teach their players to defense, and then how to use it on game day.

What I did was I broke that into five or six different pieces and yes, they get all the files at once when they buy the product but what I found was maybe if they did share something, maybe they shared one part of it. So the person who got hold of that didn’t have the entire package and it might drive traffic back to my site where they would buy the rest of the package for that.

There are a couple of different things you can do but we want to stress this part at the end of this Q&A session. It doesn’t matter. It’s not as big a deal as you think. 90% of the people out there are going to come and buy your product. They are not going to share it. If they do share it, it’s like with one person. It’s really not that big a deal.

We have made hundreds of thousands of dollars – literally – hundreds of thousands of dollars and the only thing we sell are digital products. We sell PDFs. We sell emails that you can forward to other people. What we have found is that most of the time, people do that. Think about this too, your audience doesn’t all know each other. If I’ve got 5,000 people or football coaches using one of my playbooks, those 5,000 coaches probably only know one or two other coaches out there like them.

It’s not like there’s this big network of people out there that are just waiting to purchase your digital product and share it with everyone else who may want that. Don’t worry about this. Just make your product and put it out there for sale. It’s not going to become an issue. It’s not going to be a big deal. It’s really something that you don’t even need to worry about. Just get out there and put your stuff out for sale.

JOCELYN: Okay. That wraps up today’s question. If you would like to submit a question for the Q&A with S&J…

SHANE: Yes, she said it. That’s what I’m talking about.

JOCELYN: You can head on over to Facebook on Sunday nights at 8 PM Eastern and just leave your question there for us. We will have a topic there or a question just asking for your questions, and we look forward to answering your questions there.

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Comments

Hi! I want to sell a digital bus timetable that I sell as a booklet at the moment.
My problem is that a large hotel, I live in Madeira Portugal, will download one digital product and share it with all their clients. How can I stop this from happening.
There client base is in the thousands.